“Was it an old docta?” cried Lady Sunderbund.  “How delightful!  And now I shall be a patient!”

She concentrated upon the bishop.

“Oh, I’ve been thinking all the time of all the things you told me.  Ova and ova.  It’s all so wondyful and so—­so like a G’ate Daw opening.  New light.  As if it was all just beginning.”

She clasped her hands.

The bishop felt that there were a great number of points to this situation, and that it was extremely difficult to grasp them all at once.  But one that seemed of supreme importance to his whirling intelligence was that Lady Ella should not know that he had gone to relieve his soul by talking to Lady Sunderbund in London.  It had never occurred to him at the time that there was any shadow of disloyalty to Lady Ella in his going to Lady Sunderbund, but now he realized that this was a thing that would annoy Lady Ella extremely.  The conversation had in the first place to be kept away from that.  And in the second place it had to be kept away from the abrupt exploitation of the new theological developments.

He felt that something of the general tension would be relieved if they could all three be got to sit down.

“I’ve been talking for just upon two hours,” he said to Lady Ella.  “It’s good to see the water boiling for tea.”

He put a chair for Lady Sunderbund to the right of Lady Ella, got her into it by infusing an ecclesiastical insistence into his manner, and then went and sat upon the music-stool on his wife’s left, so as to establish a screen of tea-things and cakes and so forth against her more intimate enthusiasm.  Meanwhile he began to see his way clearer and to develop his line.

“Well, Lady Sunderbund,” he said, “I can assure you that I think you will be no small addition to the church life of Princhester.  But I warn you this is a hard-working and exacting diocese.  We shall take your money, all we can get of it, we shall take your time, we shall work you hard.”

“Wo’k me hard!” cried Lady Sunderbund with passion.

“We will, we will,” said the bishop in a tone that ignored her passionate note.

“I am sure Lady Sunderbund will be a great help to us,” said Lady Ella.  “We want brightening.  There’s a dinginess....”

Lady Sunderbund beamed an acknowledgment.  “I shall exact a ’eturn,” she said.  “I don’t mind wo’king, but I shall wo’k like the poo’ students in the Middle Ages did, to get my teaching.  I’ve got my own soul to save as well as help saving othas.  Since oua last talk—­”

She found the bishop handing her bread and butter.  For a time the bishop fought a delaying action with the tea-things, while he sought eagerly and vainly in his mind for some good practical topic in which he could entangle and suppress Lady Sunderbund’s enthusiasms.  From this she broke away by turning suddenly to Lady Ella.

“Youa husband’s views,” she said, “we’e a ’eal ’evelation to me.  It was like not being blind—­all at once.”